The Eye of Love: Reflections on Jesuit Education

The Eye of Love: Reflections on Jesuit Education

You are invited to participate in a one-day conference on ‘Jesuits and Education’ being organised by the Heythrop Institute for Religion and Society. Very soon after their foundation in 1540, the Jesuits became involved in the theory and practice of education at all levels, leading to the establishment of a European, then global, network of schools and colleges. These institutions were structured according to a powerful, distinctively Catholic vision of renaissance humanism.

The history is an extraordinary one; but the Jesuit commitment and contribution to education continues today. Recent studies proclaiming the Jesuits as the first truly global organisation will shape the reflection of this conference upon Jesuit education, past, present and future. In 2014, a conference for Heythrop College’s four hundredth anniversary celebrated these themes; a volume entitled The Eye of Love (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2016) explores the philosophical and theological vision underpinning the Jesuit educational tradition. This vision is summed up as ‘the service of faith and of the radical implications of faith in a world where it is becoming easier to settle for something less than faith and less than justice’.

There will be opportunity for short papers on the conference themes. For further information, and to discuss the possibility of offering a paper, please contact the conference organiser Dr Sean Whittle (
s.whittle@heythrop.ac.uk).